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    Dissecting Jack's Lies: NIU Shooting

    Jack Thompson must have Fox News on speed dial, because every time a student shoots someone it seems like he's there, head hanging low, like a vulture, dishing out his special brand of truisms.

    Seeing that Jack went out of his way to email me this morning to point out that he was "right" about the shooting being spurred by Counter-Strike, I thought it was probably worth another round of Dissecting Jack's Lies.

    Hit a jump for his confusing quotes and how accurate they were:

    1: We find from brain scan studies out of Harvard that if you get started playing, for example, violent video games you can more likely copy-cat the behaviors in the games.
    Verdict: False
    Evidence: While the study of adolescents by Harvard and Indiana university researchers found that video games can spur "emotional arousal" and lower self-control it never made that final leap. In fact David S. Bickham, a research scientist at the Center on Media and Child Health at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, told the Washington Post that the study, while interesting, wasn't conclusive.

    2: The disturbing thing that keeps popping up in many of these as in Va Tech, Columbine, Paducah, where I represented the six parents of the three girls shot and killed, is that you can rehearse these types of massacres on simulators which are called video games. And you can therefore made more proficient in doing this.
    Verdict: False
    Evidence: Va Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho only had a passing interest in gaming years before the shooter. A lawyer tried to draw a connection between the game Doom and Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, but that was tossed out by a federal judge. Paducah shooter Michael Carneal also played Doom, but that was found to not be connected to the shooting. Video game as murder simulator and training tool just doesn't hold any water.

    3. The worst school shooting in history until Va Tech, was by Robert Steinhauser in Erfurt, Germany who trained on Counter-Strike Half Life. That's the game that Cho at Va Tech trained on in High School.
    Verdict: Not exactly true
    Evidence: While it is true that Steinhauser and Cho both played Counter-Strike at some point in their lives, with more than a million copies sold, that could probably be said of a lot of college students. Saying that Cho "trained on" the game is a bit of a stretch.

    4. And um the effect, the affects the psychological affect of the shooter, plus his attire is suggestive of a couple of the games in which the "hero" wears this type of attire.
    Verdict: Likely false
    Evidence: The description by those present don't make it sound like he had a flat affect. One person said "It looked like a theatrical thing the way he walked onto the stage." Others described his behavior leading up to the shooting as erratic. Not surprising of a man who had recently been dumped by his girlfriend and had stopped taking his medication, possibly anti-depressants. Simply wearing black doesn't mean he was dressing up like the "hero" from Counter-Strike.

    5: I lost my train of thought. I wrote a book...
    Verdict: True
    Evidence: Jack did indeed write a book, and I think he lost his train of thought about two decades ago.


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